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Green Taxis Create Marketing Niche
Filed Under (Innovations, Marketing Niches) by Jeff Stripp on 01-07-2007
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The evening was to be a launch, of sorts. The Durham Bulls were opening an eight-game home stand June 14. What better way to promote the wind-in-your-face fun of a pedicab ride than offering free pregame rides from the parking lot to the ballpark?
“A limited audience, I guess, ” Dana Di Maio said as he sat on his dark blue pedicab after the game started. “I took three rides total … no, four.”
Di Maio is the part-time pedicab coordinator for Greenway Transit, part of a Durham nonprofit pushing a variety of “green” initiatives ranging from its fleet of biodiesel buses and vans to biofuels to Third World fair trade.
Right now Di Maio is also the only driver for the two pedicabs that over time he hopes will become part of the streetscape linking the American Tobacco Historic District, downtown Durham, Brightleaf Square and Ninth Street. He’s looking for drivers and exposure, some of which the pedicabs will get Saturday in the parade that accompanies Durham Rising.
Di Maio’s first riders of the evening last week couldn’t pass up the free novelty, which came with their confession: “I’m lazy,” said both Curtis Walker, 18, and Michael Leathers, 19, before jumping into the pedicab for a brisk three-minute ride from the East Pettigrew Street parking deck around the corner to the ballpark’s front entrance on Blackwell Street. Among the other riders were a middle-aged couple and two younger women.
“The people seemed to like it,” Di Maio said. “One person said it was like New York.”
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